Meher did the only brave thing she had left. She did not look at the lamps going out. She looked at the woman.
"If we come with you," she said, "will you give Dev back?"
Kabir hissed her name. The woman in the red odhni considered the question with great seriousness, the way a child considers a trade.
"The palace keeps what it is given," she said. "But it can be asked."
"Then we'll ask."
The last lamp at the far end of the bazaar went out. The darkness down there was not the darkness of night. It was thicker. It had edges. Meher felt it the way you feel a truck pass too close on the highway, a pressure in the ears, a wrongness in the air.
The woman turned and began to walk up the hill toward the palace, and Meher, holding Kabir's hand so hard her knuckles cracked, followed her.
The palace had changed.
Where there had been bare stone, there were now hangings of silk, heavy and crimson, stirring in a breeze that did not exist. Where there had been bats, there were musicians sitting cross-legged against the walls, shehnai and dholak in their laps, their instruments silent, their faces turned toward the stairs. They were grey. Not pale — grey, the exact colour of the fort's stone, as if they had been carved from it and had forgotten. None of them looked at Meher. All of them were waiting.
On the topmost terrace, beneath a mandap of marigolds that had dried to brown paper, a young woman sat on a low wooden seat. She wore bridal red, heavy with gold, and her face was hidden by a veil so fine that the starlight passed through it. Her hands rested in her lap. They were covered in mehendi, and the mehendi was still wet.
Beside her, on the seat meant for the groom, sat Dev.
He was wearing his black jacket and a sehra of white flowers that hung over his eyes. He was very still. His chest rose and fell, slowly, so slowly, like a man in deep sleep.
"Dev!" Kabir started forward. The woman in the red odhni lifted one finger, and he stopped as if he had walked into glass.
"Princess Ratnavati," the woman said, bowing low. "Guests have come to ask."
The bride did not move. But the voice that came from under the veil filled the whole terrace, low and tired and very old.
"Everyone asks," said Ratnavati. "Four hundred years, and everyone asks. The tantric asked for my love. The king my father asked for the city to be spared. The soldiers asked for their wives. The shepherd's grandfather asked for his goats. Everyone who comes to Bhangarh wants something from Bhangarh." The veil turned, very slightly, toward Meher. "What do you want, girl who does not answer questions?"
"My friend," Meher said. "He's not yours. He came here because of us. Because of a video. Let him go."
"He came here because he was called." The bride lifted one wet red hand and let it fall. "Do you know what the curse was? They tell it wrong in your videos. Singhia did not curse me to die. He cursed this city to wait. To wait until a groom came who was not afraid of me. The whole city stopped the night of my wedding and it has been holding its breath ever since. The lamps. The market. The music. Everyone waiting for the wedding to finish so that they can finally, finally go."
Meher looked at the grey musicians. At the shops below with their bangles and their cloth. At the woman in the red odhni, who was not smiling anymore.
"So finish it," Meher said.
"I cannot. Every groom who sits there sleeps. Every groom is afraid." Ratnavati's voice cracked, just slightly, like old plaster. "Your friend was the first in a hundred years who did not run. He looked at me and he said, you look tired. Nobody has said that to me since I was alive." A pause. "I would like to keep him."
Kabir was crying without making any sound. Meher's mind was racing through every story her nani had ever told her, every rule, every loophole. You cannot take from a spirit. You cannot lie to a spirit. You can only give.
"Then let me give you something instead," Meher said. "The thing you actually want."
The veil went still.
"You don't want a groom. You want the wedding to end. You want everyone to be able to leave." Meher's hands were shaking. She held them together so no one would see. "So let's end it. The phere. The seven rounds. Dev sits there because he's the groom. But the pheras need a fire, and a pandit, and a witness who says the words. I know the words. My nani made me learn them for my cousin's wedding. I'll say them. Kabir will be the witness. You finish your wedding. And when it's done—"
"When it's done," said Ratnavati slowly, "the city can go."
"And Dev comes back with us."
For a long moment, nothing moved on the terrace. Then, very softly, under the veil, the bride laughed. It was the same laugh they had heard from the bazaar, three hours or three hundred years ago. It did not sound cruel. It sounded like relief.
"There is one thing you have not understood," Ratnavati said. "A wedding joins two people for seven lifetimes. If you finish mine, the city goes free. But the groom must walk the seven rounds with me. And no one has ever told me what happens to a living man at the end of the seventh."
The grey musicians lifted their instruments.
In the centre of the mandap, without anyone touching it, the dry wood of the sacred fire caught flame.
Dev's eyes opened beneath the sehra. He looked at Meher. He was awake, and he was terrified, and he said, very clearly: "Meher. Whatever you're about to do—"
Somewhere below, on the dark road outside the fort, the first light of a car's headlamps swept across the wall. The guard. Or someone else. Coming up the hill.
The shehnai began to play.
(What happens next is up to you. Does Meher say the words? Does Kabir run for the headlights? Does Dev walk the seven rounds? Continue this story — write the next episode, and your ending becomes one of Bhangarh's paths.)
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